page_title: Opportunity (rover)
section_title: Design and construction
hierarchical_section_title: Opportunity (rover) / Design and construction
caption_attribution_description: PanCam Mast Assembly (PMA) aboard Mars Exploration Rovers, from full scale reproduction on display at the Virginia Air and Space Center
context_page_description: Opportunity, also known as MER-B or MER-1, and nicknamed "Oppy", is a robotic rover that was active on Mars from 2004 until the middle of 2018. Launched on July 7, 2003, as part of NASA's Mars Exploration Rover program, it landed in Meridiani Planum on January 25, 2004, three weeks after its twin Spirit touched down on the other side of the planet. With a planned 90-sol duration of activity, Spirit functioned until it got stuck in 2009 and ceased communications in 2010, while Opportunity was able to stay operational for 5111 sols after landing, maintaining its power and key systems through continual recharging of its batteries using solar power, and hibernating during events such as dust storms to save power. This careful operation allowed Opportunity to exceed its operating plan by 14 years, 46 days, 55 times its designed lifespan. By June 10, 2018, when it last contacted NASA, the rover had traveled a distance of 45.16 kilometers.
  Mission highlights included the initial 90-sol mission, finding extramartian meteorites such as Heat Shield Rock, and over two years of exploring and studying Victoria crater.
context_section_description: Spirit and Opportunity are twin rovers, each a six-wheeled, solar-powered robot standing 1.5 meters (4.9 ft) high, 2.3 meters (7.5 ft) wide, and 1.6 meters (5.2 ft) long and weighing 180 kilograms (400 lb). Six wheels on a rocker-bogie system enable mobility. Each wheel has its own motor, the vehicle is steered at front and rear and was designed to operate safely at tilts of up to 30 degrees. Maximum speed is 5 centimeters per second (2.0 in/s) although average speed was about a fifth of this (0.89 centimeters per second (0.35 in/s)). Both Spirit and Opportunity have pieces of the fallen World Trade Center's metal on them that were "turned into shields to protect cables on the drilling mechanisms".
  Solar arrays generate about 140 watts for up to fourteen hours per sol, while rechargeable lithium ion batteries stored energy for use at night. Opportunity's onboard computer uses a 20 MHz RAD6000 CPU with 128 MB of DRAM, 3 MB of EEPROM, and 256 MB of flash memory. The rover's operating temperature ranges from −40 to +40 °C (−40 to 104 °F) and radioisotope heaters provide a base level of heating, assisted by electrical heaters when necessary. A gold film and a layer of silica aerogel provides insulation.
  Communications depend on an omnidirectional low-gain antenna communicating at a low data rate and a steerable high-gain antenna, both in direct contact with Earth. A low gain antenna is also used to relay data to spacecraft orbiting Mars.
  Fixed science/engineering instruments included:
  Panoramic Camera (Pancam) – examines the texture, color, mineralogy, and structure of the local terrain.
  Navigation Camera (Navcam) – monochrome with a higher field of view but lower resolution, for navigation and driving.
  Miniature Thermal Emission Spectrometer (Mini-TES) – identifies promising rocks and regolith for closer examination, and determines the processes that formed them.
  Hazcams, two B&W cameras with 120 degree field of view, that provide additional data about the rover's surroundings.
  The rover arm holds the following instruments:
  Mössbauer spectrometer (MB) MIMOS II – used for close-up investigations of the mineralogy of iron-bearing rocks and regolith.
  Alpha particle X-ray spectrometer (APXS) – close-up analysis of the abundances of elements that make up rocks and regolith.
  Magnets – for collecting magnetic dust particles
  Microscopic Imager (MI) – obtains close-up, high-resolution images of rocks and regolith.
  Rock Abrasion Tool (RAT) – exposes fresh material for examination by instruments on board.
  The cameras produce 1024-pixel by 1024-pixel images, the data is compressed with ICER, stored, and transmitted later.
  The rover's name was chosen through a NASA sponsored student essay competition.
  Opportunity was 'driven' by several operators throughout its mission, including JPL roboticist Vandi Verma who also cowrote the PLEXIL command language used in its software.
caption: Pancam Mast Assembly (PMA)
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